A flight sim on the PlayStation? Surely not. The title suggests that this is the third aerial offering from Namco, so why don't we remember the other two? Maybe it's because they weren't much fun.
Andy Ashwin

What do you expect? Flight sims simply don't work on consoles.
That's what we thought until we saw this. Okay, so it's not exactly a fully-fledged flight simulation - if it were you'd need a keyboard, joystick, mouse, flying jacket, pilot's seat... all the stuff essential to those PC flight-types. But don't go thinking that it's just another shoot 'em up - it's wedged firmly between the two.

Whaddya mean? It either is or it isn't.
In a shoot 'em up like, for instance, Afterburner, you're extremely limited in what you can do. You have to follow a specified route, as if you were on rails. In Ace Combat 3 you can fly pretty much wherever the hell you want, including up-tiddly-up-up and, indeed, down-tiddly-down-down. As with a proper flight sim, too much of the latter usually results in crump-tinklage.

I get it. So how do I control it without a keyboard et al?
The best controller for the job is the Dual Shock Analogue pad - it works a treat. The stick on the left moves your control surfaces, which in turn move your aircraft about, and the right one moves your head around, allowing you to 'check your six' and the like. L1 and R1 control the throttle and L2 and R2 move your rudder. That leaves 'triangle' to select target, 'x' to fire your guns and 'circle' to fire missiles. There's also 'square' to bring up a nifty little map and 'select' to switch the autopilot on/off.